American Hard Drive Instability in China

From the USA, I have brought several external firewire hard drives that I connect to my Macbook Pro to edit in Final Cut Pro in China. On all the hard drives power bricks the input is rated 100-240V, yet whenever I turn on Final Cut Pro the program constantly crashes. I noticed that my hard drives vibrate because of the 110/220 voltage difference, so my theory is that the drives don't work well with 220V electricity despite the specs written on the power brick. So today I bought a large transformer, Yue Ying brand, rated for 2000 watts. The input is 220V and output is 110V. I've connected a brand new American APC 10 outlet Back-UPS to it, and my hard drives to the battery backup plugs on the UPS. Final Cut Pro is still unstable and crashing. I'm not sure what to do at this point. The salesman connected the transformer to a digital meter and rated 110V. I'm wondering whether the hard drive should run at 120V, or possibly the 50/60Hz cycle difference is causing the issue. I do not have this issue at all in the USA, only in China. Any advice would be most appreciated!

Thanks,
Alexander

I've worked in China and all over South East Asia with G-RAID's, LaCie's and all manner of no name brands and never experienced the issue you're noting, Alex, but fwiw why not buy one locally or in Hong Kong?

Cause I brought over 8 hard drives, have a project that's 2TB in size, and dread buying yet another hard drive, but perhaps I'll make the plunge if given no other choice.

I'd do a test first. Take the drive out of the equation, copy some media files to your internal hard drive, start a small project with those files and proceed to work with them. See if you get the same issues.


www.derekmok.com

I rarely post on this forum, although I read it daily, since my expertise and experience pales
in comparison to the moderators and frequent respondents. However, I agree with Derek.

Firstly, I purchased a MacBookPro last June and have been running three, sometimes four, external hard drives, all bought in the USA: a 500 Gig G-Tech, 1tb OWC, and a 320 WD with a generic FW box, No issues with FCP 6.02.

Secondly, I live in 220 v land (actually in Jerusalem, Israel). As a general rule I purchase my hard drives and external fire-wire drives in the USA, and bring them over. All have power packs that give the specs as 110v-240v (or 220v). I use them without transformers, just a dinky plastic adapter going from flat USA plugs to round European ones. I've been doing this for about six-years, since I switched from PC to a G-4 dual 800 and FCP 2.0. I sometimes ran as many as six or seven FW drives in a chain off the G-4, although I know this is a serious risk.

I was in China last year for a couple of months, but without my computer. I did have a camera (canon HV-20) purchased at B&H that charged up easily, and an AT&T LG phone that also charged up with no problems. So I'd try some of the Mac stuff, disconnect all hard drives and run FCP, as Derek said, although I'd guess you tried that already.

Then connect them a drive at a time, straight into the computer without the UPS. See if all the drives are bad, or just one. Then I'd try hooking up the UPS. Could be a simple think like a short in a cable. Old rule number one, check the cables. Check the connections. Derek said the same thing in far fewer words.
Then stuff Derek and others know better, dump preferences, run disk utility on your start-up drive, maybe test the FW drives using Disk Warrior.

Also, I have an Imac which handles a few external hard drives simultaneously.

Thank you guys for the advice. Yes, testing each drive individually might be the best option. Because I'm daisy chaining 3 drives, perhaps one of them is the culprit. I suspect it's not my 2 G-tech drives, but my Wiebetech Traydock which actually started malfunctioning after my last trip to China and was so unstable that I had to pay $70 for a new board. I've replaced the Wiebetech and will try again. Thank you again! Ugh, I guess I bought that huge transformer for nothing, sigh.